Gallery: The Best Bánh Mì in Manhattan, NYC

Bành Mí Zon (Classic - $6.50), 23 points

The Bread (10 points): The archetypical bành mí baguette: ultra-crisp and crackly with a blistered surface and soft, tender crumb.
The Filling (9 points): The freshest tasting fillings of the bunch: plenty of ham and headcheese with a bright tasting pâté and a handful of sweet and savory chicken floss. The mayo is fine, but not quite sweet or buttery enough.
The Vegetables (4 points): Carrots and daikon that stay crisp and a nice balance of cilantro and cucumber. My only complaint is a lack of heat on the hot version.

Co Ba (Thit- $7) 20 points

The Bread (5 points): It's perfect—for a French baguette. For a bánh mì, on the other hand, it's far too tough and chewy. It's at least fresh and crisp, though.
The Filling (10 points): Incredibly flavorful and juicy grilled pork with a hit of sweetness and crisp, caramelized edges. We like the pork belly version almost better than the classic. No pâté here, but you don't miss it.
The Vegetables (5 points): Super fresh thick-cut carrots and daikon and plenty of cilantro and cucumber. Added bonus: they give you fresh sliced jalapeños on the side, if you like a bit of extra heat.

Saigon Vietnamese Sandwiches (House Special $4.25), 19 points

The Bread (7 points): Slightly underbaked, but crisp and tender nonetheless
The Filling (8 points): Abundant and tasty, the house special barbecued pork version is more flavorful than the pâté sandwich, which had not-flavorful enough cold cuts.
The Vegetables (4 points): Bright and fresh, with a strong white pepper flavor.

Bånh Mí Saigon (Pork $3.75), 15 points

The Bread (6 points): The bread is not toasted to order, which meant that one of mine came out hot, but the other had been sitting around premade for a while. It's a crime to let a bành mí sit around!
The Filling (7 points): Cold cuts are decent, but the barbecued pork version was tough and dry.
The Vegetables (2 points): The carrots and daikon were flavorful, but bordering on mushy because of how thin they were sliced.

Banh Mi Bai Cha (Classic, $5.95), 15 points

The Bread (6 points): Not first tier—the crust was a little lacking, like in a mediocre bagel. The crumb was the right fluffy, tender texture, though.
The Filling (6 points): Their pâté is nearly as good as Zon's, though their ham and other cold cuts were rubbery and lacked flavor. A bit mayo heavy—it squished out when we bit down.
The Vegetables (3 points): What is it with the fear of daikon? The carrots were also sliced far too thin—almost as if they were grated—robbing the sandwich of some necessary crunch.

Baoguette (Classic, $6), 12 points

The Bread (3 points): It's underbaked and chewy like a French baguette, which leads you to question whether there's rice flour in it at all.
The Filling (6 points): Not traditional by any means, but their pork is tasty nonetheless, particularly the sweet, lemongrass-scented grilled option. Sriracha-laced mayo makes the sandwich feel clumsy to me—it lacks the bright, balanced flavors of a traditional bành mí, instead going for brute force.
The Vegetables (3 points): The daikon and carrot slaw is fantastic, but I'd have preferred more cilantro and cucumbers sliced into wedges instead of thin, which lose their crunch, again disrupting the textural balance.

Nicky's (Classic - $5), 12 points

The Bread (6 points): Soft and tender, but more like a sub roll than anything. It's got a smooth, evenly browned crust that is not great at crisping up.
The Filling (4 points): Mayo-heavy, with really old tasting pâté. Honestly, I'd describe it as cat food-like in flavor (though I probably don't dislike cat food as much as the next person). The other cold cuts were decent.
The Vegetables (2 points): First question: where's my daikon? Carrots alone don't add enough complexity to the vegetable slaw, completely throwing the sandwich out of whack.

An Choi (Classic, $6.50), 11 points

The Bread (6 points): Pretty straightforward classic bánh mì bread. Nothing spectacular, but properly toasted.
The Filling (4 points): The Viet bologna is sliced thin and stacked high, but still strangely low in flavor. I've never seen the fluorescent pink rinded-pork roll they use, but it was tender, if stingy.
The Vegetables (1 points): Distinctly lacking in cilantro, and the cucumbers were cut into thin matchsticks that seemed to have started to break down. No crunch at all.

Bành Mí (formerly Mangez Avec Moi; Traditional, $5.99), 7 points

The Bread (3 points): Flaky and chewy with a cornmeal crust, it would make an excellent sandwich under other circumstances. For a bành mí, however? It just ain't right.
The Filling (2 points): Scarily thick-sliced slabs of Viet bologna and steamed-tasting chunks of pork are generous but bland.
The Vegetables (2 points): No daikon, carrots that are barely pickled, and—this is weird—Romaine lettuce, and only a few leaves of cilantro robs the sandwich of any sort of Vietnamese inclination if might have had.

Paris Sandwich (Special, $4,25), 7 points

The Bread (3 points): Baked in-house and crisped up to order, it still lacked any structure and flavor, tasting more like a cracker than anything else.
The Filling (1 point): The ham was a scary shade of green and the terrine had the dry look of cold cuts that had been sliced hours before.
The Vegetables (3 points): Daikon and carrots were good enough, if slightly mushy, but there was almost no cilantro on the sandwich, robbing it of a key flavor.

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